"It's not like that." Loki sighed. "Listen. I will admit that death sooner rather than later is fine with me, but I hate losing much more than I want to die. There are any number of ways around what I know and what I saw. First and easiest is simply not returning to the Statesman. According to what Thor says, I had the Tesseract, I had a ship, and I have knowledge of where at least one other Infinity Stone is. It would be the easiest thing in the universe for me to use the Tesseract and start either running or collecting. Even that other me who hadn't been here knew that. But I chose to return to the Statesman."

He leaned forward slightly, as if trying to will her to understand. "I must have a reason for that. Thor would have you believe that when Thanos hits the Statesman, I started to scramble and improvise, but that's not what I saw. I saw steps in a much larger plan. Not my plan, of course. Not Thor's, either, I think. I don't know whose plan it is or all the whys here and now, but I have to trust my own judgement. If my judgement is that handing the Stone to Thanos and dying at his hand is the best path, which it clearly was-slash-will-be, then that is my plan. If, when I reach that point, the whys aren't sufficient, I will do something else."